Susan Marshall & Company Present Dance Depicting the Millennium

Posted: December 1, 1999 at 1:00 am, Last Updated: November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

Six dancers and a guest artist are joined onstage Saturday, Dec. 4, by dozens of naked, inflatable dummies in Susan Marshall & Company’s The Descent Beckons, a dance that holds a mirror up to our society as it careens toward 2000. The performance is held in the Concert Hall at 8 p.m., and a pre-performance discussion is held at 7:15 p.m. in the coffee lounge on the Grand Tier.

The Descent Beckons, a provocative piece that takes its title from a William Carlos Williams poem, springs from Marshall’s contemplation of the year’s end, accompanied worldwide by rituals in which communities purge themselves of past sins in order to begin anew. The dummies are a “class of subordinate beings–controllable, dominated, manipulated,” she says. “They become alter egos. They are our dead. Their nakedness and incapacity reminds us of our atrocities.”

The performance incorporates contemporary dance, cabaret, and vaudeville–complete with dancer and performance artist Lisa Kron as emcee. “The dance echoes the continual race against time, and the possibility of ongoing renewal and rebirth,” says Marshall.

Tickets are $25 to $35. To charge tickets by phone, call ProTix at 218-6500. For more information, call the Box Office at x38888 or visit the Center for the Arts website.